‘Star Wars’ Slowdown Confirmed by Disney CEO

The Star Wars franchise has ramped up its output in a big way since being acquired by Disney. Star Wars films used to arrive two-to-three years apart, with new trilogies only arriving once in a generation. Now that we have Star Wars films arriving once a year fans have understandably been feeling a bit of overload lately.

Well, after the notable underperformance of Solo at the summer movie box office, Disney was reportedly mulling over a serious revision of its Star Wars saturation plans. Now, Disney CEO Bob Iger has outright confirmed that to be the case.

In a new THR feature feature on Disney’s next wave of entertainment ventures, Iger revealed the following about the future of the Star Wars franchise, and his own mistake in pushing the franchise too far, too fast:

“I made the timing decision, and as I look back, I think the mistake that I made — I take the blame — was a little too much, too fast. You can expect some slowdown, but that doesn’t mean we’re not gonna make films. J.J. [Abrams] is busy making [Episode] IX. We have creative entities, including [Game of Thrones creators David] Benioff and [D.B.] Weiss, who are developing sagas of their own, which we haven’t been specific about. And we are just at the point where we’re gonna start making decisions about what comes next after J.J.’s. But I think we’re gonna be a little bit more careful about volume and timing. And the buck stops here on that.”

Will that sufficient explanation for those fans who have been rallying against Star Wars ever since Disney got hold of it? Sort of.

This will be good news to the sector of fans who are simply feeling fatigued by how many Star Wars movies there have been lately (The Force Awakens, Rogue One, The Last Jedi, Solo), as more time between installments is pretty much what they’ve been asking for. However, there’s another sector of fans who have had major problems with the quality of the Star Wars films that Disney has put out. For those fans, hearing that there will be more time between the next Rogue One or The Last Jedi won’t be much solace, as those films would arguably still be the vision of what Disney intended.

It’s also ironic to hear Iger talk about scaling down, when Star Wars is poised to expand in such a big way. As Iger indicated, Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have an original trilogy in the works; Last Jedi director Rian Johnson has his own original trilogy in the works; and Jon Favreau is working on a live-action Star Wars TV series; while a new Obi-Wan standalone is in development, and a new animated series (Star Wars Resistance) is about to premiere. It sounds like the timing of each project’s release will be the variable – but even with longer waits between projects, it will still be more Star Wars content than we’ve ever had before.

The saga continues with Star Wars: Episode IX on December 20, 2019.